


Hard Roads, Curious People II

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [34]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Cameos, Gen, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-13 01:30:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11174208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: In which there are strangers on the road.





	Hard Roads, Curious People II

**Author's Note:**

> cf. Venice II

_hard roads_

 

The mornings were the worst.

Frankly d’Artagnan enjoyed the long days moving through the valleys and hills and tiny villages of France like a needle stitching through a quilt. The version of _travelling incognito_ that Aramis practiced - a mixture of gaudy distracting details, barefaced gall, and an easy, practiced gregarity - was educational and undoubtedly entertaining.

Evenings were a mixed bag. Sometimes they passed the hours in tale-telling - Aramis’ recent travels, d’Artagnan’s youth in the hot stony hills of Gascony, accounts of the intrigues of a dozen cities taught punctiliously as a village catechist drilling a band of unlettered children. Those nights passed well enough.

But when Aramis intended to be provoking, when he duelled with words, he never buttoned his foil. He could leave great gashes of emotional insight, gushing wounds of hurt feelings, all the while keeping a gentle, interested expression on his face as he placidly cooked their dinner or busied himself with the other small chores of a one-night camp.

“You’re trying to keep my attention,” d’Artagnan told him, fuming, so angry he could feel the sweat spring up on the back of his neck.

“My dear d’Artagnan,” said Aramis, feeding more wood to the fire, “I already have it.” He poured boiling water from the pot into a mug and added chopped herbs from a twist of paper. He didn’t offer d’Artagnan any.

“I don’t deserve this.”

Aramis’ eyes flickered, as he stirred the water and herbs with a peeled twig. “No, you don’t.” He didn’t say, _You chose to follow me._

“You’re not like this with Athos and Porthos.”

Aramis tutted. “I threw Porthos off a castle wall. I held a gun on him. I let him walk into what might be a plague city without a single warning… We all have things on account.”

D’Artagnan’s mouth firmed. “And yet.”

Aramis sighed, a wrinkle forming between his brows. “I’ll try to be kinder.”

D’Artagnan rolled onto his back, stretching his arm back to pillow his head. “Is it that you’re trying not to fall asleep...? Are you afraid of an ambush?”

“Your attempts at analysis are interesting, but ultimately fruitless.” He heard Aramis sip from his mug. “But please do continue. It is a virtuous endeavour to encourage the young.”

D’Artagnan swore under his breath. He didn't say, _You asked me along._ He shifted under his blanket, and then said, idly, “You know, my mother used to tell me stories about the _mategot,_ this black cat that was also a wizard. You had to lure it with a chicken - a good plump one, no stringy old hens - and carry it home without looking back once and then it would help you and not…”

After a time Aramis said, “And not…?”

In a ragged voice d'Artagnan bellowed, “EAT YOU!!”

Aramis laughed. “Do another,” he suggested.

D'Artagnan was hoarse by the time he was done, each Gascony folk tale gorier than the last, but Aramis was snoring by the end of them. D'Artagnan rolled over and went to sleep.

 

**

 

_curious people_

 

“It really is a very small world,” said Aramis cheerfully, unknotting a cloth bag of raisins and offering them to the young woman who sat beside him, legs alike swinging off the back of the tumbril cart.

She eyed him with the suspicion of youth, then offered her delicate palm for him to drop the dried fruit into it and ate them daintily, one at a time. The vivid, patterned cloth of her skirts and jacket, and her rich colouring, were brilliant in the low autumn drizzle. Deep-voiced, Sylvie Baudin said, “We had not thought to see you in France, Bazin.”

“Neither did I. You’re… how to put this delicately… are you and your father in trouble with the authorities?”

“We’re always in trouble with the authorities!” The aged man in the scholar’s robe and flat cap who perched on the driver’s seat next to d’Artagnan beamed with pride.

“For speaking the truth!” his daughter said fiercely. Then she settled her feathers. “But not in this county.”

“Or today,” her father added.

“We’re setting up as letter-writers at the market fair ahead.”

“Will-readers.”

“Teaching at the hedgerow school.”

“And legal advice.” Sylvie coughed delicately.

“So,” d’Artagnan asked the elder Baudin with morbid fascination, adjusting the reins where his horse Zad, with admirable patience, pulled the little two-wheeled cart, “what was, er, ‘Bazin’ like when you knew him in Venice?”

“He was a terrible crook,” she said austerely. “And a flirt. Who argued theology at… odd moments.”

“Your father didn’t complain about my methods.”

“Only because that hell-woman you worked with was holding a knife to his _eye _.”__

“So young and so unforgiving,” Aramis mourned, rifling through his gear and retrieving a tiny brass pot and a dainty, pointed stick.

“All is well,” Baudin _pere_ soothed. “I was quite discommoded at the time, but very pleased with the results.”

“Your feet are well, _dottore?”_ Aramis craned around to eye Baudin _pere_ with concern.

“I hardly feel stiff at all, even in the damp weather,” he said reassuringly.

 _ _“_ That’s _alright, then.” As d’Artagnan reined in to rest the horses, Aramis held up his hands to one eye, then another, and blinked hard as he dropped them down. He looked at Sylvie and batted his eyelashes, now rimmed with thick sooty kohl. “Do I look Moorish to you?”

She stared at him disapprovingly, then sighed and turned to rummage in the sacks of clothes and books tucked behind her. “I have a pretty headscarf I can lend you…”

Aramis beamed.

 

**

 

_another morning_

 

D'Artagnan kept himself still in his blankets, in the predawn darkness. He could hear the crying of small birds, the faint hiss and crackle of a small fire, and somewhere in the distance the belling of a stag. He kept his eyes clamped shut and pretended to be sleeping. _Please say something,_ he thought to Aramis, to the quiet, furtive sounds of someone moving about the camp, rolling blankets and putting wood on the fire ready to cook breakfast.

The movements stopped. D'Artagnan waited ten minutes then gave up, rolling himself to his feet and choking down the superstitious, hackle-raising dread he felt at the man sitting on the other side of the fire as still and watchful as a ghost called out of the night, warming itself at a scrap of warmth and illumination.

D'Artagnan yawned extravagantly and stretched. “Morning, Aramis,” he mumbled with deliberate casualness.

“Good morning,” the other answered with a show of good cheer, not taking his eyes off him.

But that was as far as it went. _Please,_ d'Artagnan thought desperately, _remember my name. Don't just sit there like a nothing. Don't just wait for me to tell you who you are._

**Author's Note:**

> // All I know about mategots is from a quick google of Gascony folklore. I apologise if I've made mistakes.
> 
> // _”It really is a small world.”_ \- My headcanon says that Sylvie and her dad travelled through half of Europe and she knows at least five languages. I am prepared to fight you on this.
> 
> // Actually, I don’t know if hedge schools existed in France at this time, at least by this name. They did exist in Ireland for a while - areas that couldn’t afford a full-time teacher would still have gathering places, and any wandering expert coming through would help teach the kids their letters and anything else useful they could think of. From what I’ve read, the quality wasn’t reliable - but I read one account of small children becoming fluent in written Greek, so it warn’t all bad. As for 17th C France? Call it localisation - there would have been some kind of teaching going on.


End file.
